{scaling up the northeast grain system} Wild Hive
Editor’s Note: Our monthly local-grain-love-fest with Amy Halloran is back with the 8th installment in her Scaling Up The Northeast Grain System series. You can read her previous seven pieces here. In this installment, Amy comes full circle and visits the mill & bakery where her gain-love began. -Christina
I went to Wild Hive to tour the mill last week. Located in the Hudson Valley, the place marks the beginning of my intersections with local grains. The silly Proustian tale I tell is that my husband went to Connecticut and all I got was a lousy cookie. Only the cookie was not at all lousy and it opened up the whole door to my future, not a remembrance of things past.
Let’s start with that cookie. Jack was hanging lights in trees for landscape lighting designers on estates in Greenwich, CT, and as he took the Taconic Parkway home, he stopped at a bakery. Knowing my love for all things oats, he bought me an oatmeal ganache bar. He also took a pamphlet that told how the grains were locally grown.
When he gave me the bakery bag, I begrudgingly bit into the cookie. No matter how sweet the gifts our mates give us are, we always want bigger ones. Okay, maybe some of you are nicer than I am, but I am a bad recipient. What I wanted instead was a few days break from the menagerie of kids and chickens, a few days working away from home and away from the cat who never got enough love, and being known in the world. Not that I can climb trees, but I wanted the writerly equivalent. And eventually, that single baked good gave me that. Exploring grains has put me, my curiosity and my words out in the world.
Read the rest here.